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The Story Book Of Ships - Maud & Miska Petersham - 1935

by: Drew Evan Dobbs

Publication date: 2022-08-17

Usage: Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

Topics: Maud and Miska Petersham, The Story of Ships, 1935, The John C. Winston Company, stone lithography

Language: English

I hesitated at first to begin scanning my collection of these, as due to the dimensions (approx. 20 x 21 cm) I would have to do extra photoshop work to assemble the many scans, but because of their beauty and age, I have decided to go ahead and go through my batch of 15 of Maud & Miska Petersham non-fiction books.

While I was managing my local public library branch for several years, I often got donations of vintage books, and many old children's books, which I collected and loved already, so that was a treat. It was also nice to 'rescue' them, as, invariably, they were too old and in no condition to bring into the library system OR even to sell in our used bookstore. When this group of 15 Petersham books appeared one year I was floored, as having a large group of such vintage and lovely books was a real boon to my ongoing collection, and as I said - they would have gone straight into the dumpster had I not been there to catch 'em.

Immediately I recognized that these book illustrations were created using stone lithography to generate the 5 printing plates (yellow, magenta, cyan, grey, and black), a technique I particularly adore.

Doing a bit of research, I found that they had done at least "18" books in what I call their 'non-fiction' series of educational books for young readers. After studying the collection of Petersham books available here in the Internet Archive, I found a 19th book: "The Story of Silk", which I did not own, so it is handy that that one is already available here.

I'm starting off with this lovely book, "The Story of Ships", and I hope to gradually add the other 14 in my collection.

This is scanned at 600 dpi, and although originally I was going to leave the scans as they were, and not 'restore' them, once I did a test-restore on one page section in photoshop, I could see that I had better go ahead and edit the files into a 'brighter' state, as long as I could preserve the very subtle color gradations of the originals and not make them garish.

I hope you enjoy this beautiful 32-page book and come back to look at more in the future as I add them.

Learn more about the Petershams here.

And definitely search them in the Internet Archive itself, as there appear to be many interesting books by them in here!